The Case of the Backward Mule

Two

Terry Clane lit a cigarette, settled back comfortably in the chair. Across the desk, Police Captain Jordon adjusted a combination desk lamp and ashtray so that it was midway between them, a gesture apparently intended to make the ash receptacle mutually convenient.

Terry Clane, however, noticing the peculiar grilled sides of the light stand, realized that there was a microphone concealed within the metallic base, and that by placing it exactly between them Captain Jordon had assured himself that the conversation would be duly recorded on waxed cylinders.

“Mr. Clane,” the police captain said, “I’m not going to take more than a few minutes of your time. I realize how anxious you are to be free to see the city, so I’ll be frank — and abrupt.”

“Thank you, Captain.”

“You’ve just returned from the Orient, Mr. Clane?”

“Yes. Your men were waiting for me when the boat docked.”

“I take it you know why.”

“Frankly, I do not.”

“You have been in the Orient for some time?”

“Yes.”

“War work?”

“Yes.”

“And before that you were an old hand in the Orient?”

“I had lived in China, studied there.”

“I believe you once specialized on the art of concentration in some Chinese monastery?”

“Yes, I spent two years in study.”

“You became adept in the art of concentration?”

“I was a novice. I learned a little.”

“Learned to concentrate for some specified period of time?”

“Yes.”

“How long?”

“A little over four seconds.”

“Four seconds, Mr. Clane?”

“Exactly.”

“Surely, you are joking! I have never studied concentration, but I frequently find myself concentrating for several minutes, sometimes an hour.”

Clane kept the smile from his lips. Only his eyes showed amusement. “You have, as you so aptly state, never studied concentration.”

“You mean that you doubt my word?”

“Not at all. We merely use the word concentration in a different sense. In the way the word is used in the Orient it means contemplation, with every bit of mental energy brought to bear upon that which is being contemplated; every bit.”

“Well, that’s the way I do it.”

“Does the ringing of the telephone interrupt your concentration and make it difficult for you to return to a contemplation of the problem?” Clane asked innocently.

“Indeed it does. Sometimes my wife rings up when I’m concentrating and...”

Clane’s smile caused the police captain to break off in mid sentence.

“In the Orient,” Clane said, “one who would hear the ringing of a telephone bell would be held not to be concentrating. Only when the contemplation becomes so absolute that no external disturbances can distract the attention is concentration even considered as having been begun.”

The police captain looked skeptical, then suddenly changed the subject. “All right,” he said crisply, “we’ll let all that go and get down to business. Before you left for the Orient this last time you were either engaged to Cynthia Renton, a portrait painter, or were very well acquainted with her. You had also known her sister, Alma Renton, for some years. After you left, rumor has it that Cynthia was pretty much broken up for a while, then she took up with a chap named Edward Harold. Did you ever meet him?”

“No.”

“You’ve seen him?”

“Never.”

“You know about him?”

“Yes. In a way. I was not engaged to Cynthia Renton when I left. I had been engaged to her. I suggested that she had better be free when I had to leave on this war work. My mission was highly dangerous. The chances were good against my ever returning. I wanted her to be free to meet other men on the basis of becoming interested in them. Otherwise the engagement would have dragged along and then inevitably have been broken. It’s only human nature to crave companionship, and Cynthia is very much alive, a bundle of dynamite, or she was the last I saw of her.”

“Exactly. Now about Harold’s trouble. What do you know about that?”

“I knew that he had been arrested for the murder of Horace Farnsworth, tried, convicted, sentenced to death and had appealed. The trial took place just as I was leaving China.”

“How did you know of the verdict, the sentence and the appeal?”

“By wireless.”

“From Cynthia?”

“Yes.”

“She appealed to you for help?”

“She hoped I’d get back from the Orient in time to be of some help, yes.”

“You knew Farnsworth?”

“Yes. He had some money of Cynthia’s which he was investing for her. He was also a partner in the Eastern Art Import and Trading Company. I knew the others in that company: Stacey Nevis, Ricardo Taonon and George Gloster. Farnsworth had, I believe, been in the Philippines for a while, investigating some gold-mining properties near Baguio. Naturally, I don’t think Harold was guilty.”

“Why?”

“I don’t think he did it. I think he was framed.”

“Yet you don’t even know him?”

“Except through Miss Renton’s letters.”

“You would, perhaps, do a great deal to see that he was not executed?”

“Don’t misunderstand me, Captain. I’d do anything in my power, regardless of the cost, to see that sentence of death was never carried out.”

“Exactly. Where were you last night?”

Clane showed surprise. “On the boat, some two hundred odd miles offshore.”

“You didn’t leave that boat by plane or otherwise?”

“Heavens, no. Of course not. I couldn’t possibly have done so even if I’d had the opportunity. Why do you ask?”

“Because last night Edward Harold was being taken by automobile from the county jail to San Quentin prison where the death sentence was to be carried out. His appeal was, of course, pending, but it is customary for criminals convicted of felonies to be taken to the penitentiary to await the disposition of their appeals.”

Clane sat rigid, attentive, waiting for that which he felt was to come. The desire to keep him from seeing the newspaper could have but one explanation.

“And,” Jordon went on, “at approximately ten-thirty last night the car had what appeared to be an ordinary blowout. Later on police found that heavy roofing tacks had been sprinkled all over the road. While the officers were making a first somewhat dejected appraisal of the flat tire, two masked men stepped from the bushes by the side of the road. They were heavily armed, and inasmuch as the surprise was complete, they were able to rescue Mr. Harold. The officers were handcuffed with their own handcuffs. Harold was taken away with these masked men.”

Clane sucked in a quick breath. Beyond that he showed no emotion. “Do you know anything about this affair?”

“Only what you have told me. This is the first I have heard of it.”

“Did you have any part in it — any part in the planning of it?”

“Definitely not.”

“And you have absolutely no idea where Mr. Harold might now be hiding?”

“None whatever.”

Captain Jordon pushed back his chair, said casually, “Rather a peculiar, interesting law point is involved, Mr. Clane. The Supreme Court will dismiss an appeal taken by a person who is a fugitive.”

“You mean that, if a person is convicted of a crime in an illegal manner, simply because he has escaped from jail the Supreme Court would impose a penalty?”

“Come, come, Mr. Clane. That’s loosely stated. The Supreme Court doesn’t impose a penalty. The man is already under sentence of death and the Supreme Court merely assumes the position that it is the height of impertinence for a criminal who is hiding from the law to seek to invoke the benefit of the law.”

“I take it that’s all?” Clane asked.

“Just one more point, Mr. Clane. If we should consider it necessary, would you have any objection to repeating your statements to a polygraph operator?”

“None whatever,” Clane said.

And no sooner had the words left his mouth than he realized by the expression on the face of the police officer that the trap into which he had walked had been the sole object of this preliminary phase of the examination.

“Excellent,” Captain Jordon said. “We consider it necessary for you to do so. It will only take a few moments. Right this way, please, Mr. Clane.”